Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

prefer the easier options. But easy or not, it is a direct function of how I perceive the world.
Therefore when I see such character insights in a story and when those insights push my buttons (yes -
- that's exactly how the character should react) I get a little frisson, a genuine moment of transcendental
knowledge. The writer has brought someone alive for me. Perhaps the ultimate test of a writer, and
certainly a moment to which all real artists must aspire.
So the question reduces to this -- for any given writer, how genuine do the insights that the writer
presents to me feel? How well has the writer penetrated the motivations and makeup of the characters I
am reading about? The better the writer does this, the more likely I am to weep at the tragedies and
rejoice in the triumphs.
However the plain fact is that any writer will always find it easier to convince me to believe in a male
character than to believe in a female character simply because the writer doesn't have to work nearly as
hard at it -- it's an outgrowth of my biology to believe in and understand male characters. That doesn't
make it impossible for me to believe in and understand female characters. Just harder, both for me and
the writer.
Notice that unlike Silverberg I make no a priori judgement about the gender of the writer in question -- I
have deliberately used impersonal words in developing this train of thought. I don't believe that gender of
the writer has any relevance to the question at all. Ursula Le Guin makes me believe in her heroes and
Gene Wolfe in his heroines (to name but two) and that fact alone shows that it is always possible to
transcend mere biology. It is simply a question of belief on the part of the reader; of how convincing the
writer (male or female) is to that reader.
But for exactly these same reasons it will often be the case, as Silverberg implied, that a male writer will
write about the male worldview and a female writer will write about the female perspective. That's the
path of least resistance and it is a most unusual person who won't travel that path. Though a number of
writers are unusual, and do take the opposite approach, and when they succeed, will definitely find their
books occupying pride of place on my bookshelves.
Asimov, for example, has done it at least three times (but then he always was unusual wasn't he?).
Probably one of his best characters, and certainly his own favourite, was Susan Calvin from the Robot
stories, but there was also Arkady Darrell from the Foundation stories and Marlene from Nemesis.
Gene Wolfe also presented a very believable female viewpoint in Pandora by Holly Hollander.
On the other side of the gender divide, Maureen F. McHugh managed the truly amazing feat of telling a
male viewpoint story in the first person with the novel China Mountain Zhang. Ursula Le Guin, with the
character of Shevek in The Dispossessed, also managed to present a most convincing male worldview
(this book remains one of my all time favourites).
All of them exceptions, and all of them exceptional. But they prove the rule.
It doesn't always work, of course. There is considerably more to it than simply giving a character a name
associated with the opposite gender. Heinlein tried many times to write from a feminine perspective but
in my opinion he never once succeeded in being convincing -- at least not on the levels of presentation
that we are examining in this essay!
Put all these thoughts together and the conclusion you come to is that the male writer is more likely to
convince me (as opposed to you) of his male insights than the female writer is to convince me of her
female insights.
Contrariwise, the female writer is also much more likely to convince me of her male insights than the
male writer is to convince me of his female insights.
And no, damnit -- that doesn't mean that I only read books about male characters and neither does it
mean that the only books I read by female writers are about male characters. It means no more than it
says -- it is much more difficult to convince me outside of these areas. And therefore when it works